Keto predates Atkins and was originally invented for the purpose of treating epilepsy and seizures and was meant to be used under medical supervision. Keto diets are for sick people only....A normal healthy person shouldn't follow Keto diets or any other restrictive diet plans which forbid eating certain foods. A lot of people who claim to follow Keto diet haven't even achieved true ketosis and are unable to maintain ketosis for extended periods of time because it's not easy to do that. Not eating carbs doesn't mean that you're going to enter ketosis. Eating too much protein will prevent ketosis. To enter and maintain ketosis your diet has to be 90% or more fat and the remaining 10% or less protein. Good luck following such a restrictive diet especially for somebody who is physically active and trains a lot.

Keto isn't a diet, it's a cult. As you can see from some of the posts in this thread.

All diets are cults. Some are more cultish than others. The cultish aspect of a diet can be what makes people stick to it. Many diets are difficult to follow, you have to try very hard and not back slide.
The sense of being part of a special group, with knowledge that others do not have, is empowering.

You should try keto.

You forgot to mention the "guilt" from the inevitable backslides, which can only be "forgiven" by the cult...

Oh, backsliding, what a great term. I remember when I was a kid, a group of older Christian men talking quietly in a corner about someone else, "Oh, he's been backsliding again. We need to talk to him." Yeah, there's that backsliding thing again. I never could relate to that. Let's have some good old public self-criticism, too. I ate 2! TWO slices of pizza for dinner last night. The first one felt pretty good, and then I ate another. Homemade though and really tasty, but I know I shouldn'ta. That's how that belly fat thing gets started and I knew it. But I'm not sorry, not sorry at all, and further not sorry for not feeling sorry. But I do know that's how that good food addiction thing gets started . . .

If you're eating a "diet", you're doing it wrong. "Eat food, mostly plants."

Plants are what food eats

I had a friend who was piscetarian. He said it’s like being Catholic, minus Confession, and the priests can be married. Or was that the Episcopalian? Hold on...

If your diet is hard to follow and you're worried about backsliding, it means that you're doing something wrong and you're following a wrong diet plan.....The term " backsliding" shouldn't even be applied to eating and nutrition because eating food isn't a religion.

Vegan cults judge and condemn me for eating steak... Keto and paleo cults judge and condemn me for eating white rice....And I don't care what any of them think or believe, I just fuel my body with what works best for me.

Why should I try keto?

Dessert is going to be oatmeal with berries.

Funny thing about Keto. Most people who think they are doing it, aren't. It's a pretty extreme diet originally developed to treat juveniles with epilepsy. The average adult can't really sustain it for long.
I did it go into true ketoacidosis two years ago for a month by eating only eggs, 361 for 28 days or 12.9/day (0 carbs, 0 sugars, 70/30 protein/fat split). By the end I lacked any quick energy and had to calculate how I would expend what I had. I wasn't starving but I was mild - moderately lethargic.

Also, as noted, you can't exactly target belly fat. A pronounced belly may just be a personal genetic disposition (similarly, some women carry fat disproportionately on the hips) or you could have some very slack abdomen muscles. That would allow the gut to hang forward. In that case some targeted abdomonal exercises would firm the belly but it won't really target the fat that is there specifically.

It will improve your sex life.

How exactly does that work? Not how does a sex life work but, exactly how does going into ketosis improve your sex life? Is it the constipation or the bad breath?

Hey, good looking! Want to drink some melted butter with me?

:):)

I don’t understand diets that deny certain types of calories. Don’t eat bread? That’s insane to me.

Isnt weight loss just calories in vs calories burned?

I can understand how meticulously planning and following a diet would create motivation and focus to stay on it.

But it seems far more simple to eat the “big three”, protein, carbs, and fat in ratios and amounts that satisfy your hunger and still promote weight loss.

Longitudinal dietary studies show that actually being on a particular diet more frequently results in failure than success. It's the negative reinforcement problem of not being perfect. For a while, positivity wins, but nobody's perfect. I think that over time, the negativity gets them down and they give up on the diet. People on diets will gain weight and have poorer health over time than those who simply eat less of what they eat now because seesawing is worse than being stable.

That said, there are many ways of eating less and exercising more. Calorie counting works for many people. I always suggest simply eating less and watching the scale every day. If weight goes down, however slowly, you're doing it right. It works best to decrease portion sizes very little, and then later, very little again, etc.

There are two main reasons why people reject certain types of calories and refuse to eat certain foods:

No 1 - False idea that certain foods are bad for you... Example: meat will cause cancer, eggs will cause heart attack and bread or rice will make you fat.

No 2 - Ideological beliefs... Example: eating meat makes you a murderer and an unethical immoral person.


People fail to realize that food has only one purpose: To supply fuel and nutrients so your body can stay healthy and produce enough energy to perform it's daily physical and mental functions and repair and recover itself after strenuous physical activity such as hard labour or exercise.

Hardly.

People make food choices for all sorts of reasons, both good and bad, educated and trend following. Every athlete that seriously wants to improve performance at some point looks to their diet to include and exclude certain factors.

While the basic formula of calories in vs calories out does apply, in a general sense, you can also look at those calories as to the nutrition they provide.

A cup of sugar, for example, is 773 calories but the effect of eating it would be detrimental over time. You would certainly get an energy spike or rush, and if exercising that might be valuable, that's why people use glucose gels, but it would come with an equally downward rebound as a massive amount of insulin were released to process that sugar in the body. Over time, this sort of diet (sugars based) would create a yoyo effect of highs and lows, insulin resistance and possible diabetes and cause faster cycles of hunger which would lead to over eating.

Take those same calories as complex carbohydrates and the insulin response would be more gradual. You wouldn't get the immediate sugar rush but the energy release would be more constant and metered and the feeling of fullness would last longer, leading to longer cycles between feelings of hunger and subsequently less overeating. Same calories but different results in available energy and long term weight control.

Proteins and fats are important for various body functions like building muscle and metabolism but the primary source of energy for work should come from slow acting complex carbohydrates. Our guts are generalist in nature, which is why we can flex from keto to starchy foods, but when we look to large animals that have both power and sustained speed, they eat grasses and whole grains. No well muscled race horse at the Kentucky derby eats meat, nor do gazelles, oxen or gorillas. One might point out that fast big cats like lions and tigers do eat meat but their guts are detrimentally specialized. They may starve in climates when generalists thrive if they miss a catch, and they are really only good for short bursts of speed followed by long periods of lethargy while they digest. Not really what most athletes want. As it is, most plant eating prey, in their prime, can outrun meat eating predators so they (the predators) need to seek the old, young or sick and hunt in packs.

In a pinch, food is food; but for overall athletic strategies some calories are better than others.

​​​​​​It's also for enjoyment to some extent (carry that too far and you'll get fat, but all work and no play makes Jack a full boy) and for social bonding. The social aspect is a big problem with diets that eliminate entire good groups, it's also why fake meat looks like meat. Loneliness is as bad for your health as being obese. It's important to break bread with friends, family, loved ones.

I prescribe to intermittent fasting/time restricted eating. I don't judge you on what you eat, just when you eat it